Machine_in_the_middle is a collaborative artwork by Artist Rod Dickinson and myself. The artwork is a demo of an interactive system in which a participant wears an EEG headset that classifies their emotion.

Based on their emotion classification, the system then uses electrical muscle stimulation to articulate the facial muscles of the participant to an expression matching their classified emotion. 

The concept is inspired by type of cyber attack called a “man in the middle attack”, in which information is covertly intercepted while being transmitted between devices. 

In Machine_in_the_middle, it is emotion that is intercepted and exposed for all to see, as its informational constituents flow through human physiology.